---Raala’s perspective---

My hands are on the front handles of a heavy pall as I lead the way along a hillside path that has us cresting over the forest canopy.

I’ve been carrying it, on and off, since nearly a week ago… though it should be much quicker to return home, even accounting for the hunting we’ll need to do on the way back.

The charcoal footprints that mark out the paths in Bison Hearthstead’s lands have changed colour twice (to white chalk as we passed through the territory of Wolf Hearthstead and now to orange in the territory of Golden Eagle Hearthstead) and changed direction three times.

I spare a glance to the side to make sure we’re still going the right way…

Yep… the toes are still pointing forward, we haven’t overshot it.

Just as I’m thinking that, we round the side of the hill and I recognise where we are from the plume of smoke I can see rising above the trees.

It takes us about another twentieth of the sunlight to make it down the hill and through the forests to the huts at the edge of the hearthstead.

I place down my end of the pall and turn around to the other five (three on carrying duty, two resting from having been on duty earlier today) and say “Tabrok, Larlya…” naming the pair on rest “…you two stay here and guard them… You three can come in but I’ll talk to the old woman… You just wait by the hearth.” indicating the three who’ll be more tired and trying hard to ignore the shapes underneath the bark cloths, between me and them.

I walk between the smoke hut and the sleeping hut, towards the hearth.

As I come into the middle of the settlement, I see a cute, flat face with a tiny nose and a round, bald skull… sucking on a pale breast.

I’m so smitten with the little baby that I almost miss his mother asking me “Greetings, Bisonwoman. Is there something I can help you with?” with sombreness appropriate for what she knows we’re here for.

“Yes… we’re here to see Shamaness Dirleya.” I answer.

“Of course… If you take a seat by the hearth, I’ll let her know you’re waiting.” says the bare chested Eaglewoman, turning to go.

I exhale and sit down on one of the log benches that have been arranged by the fire pit.

Thankfully for me, they haven’t started cooking for the evening yet, so the fire isn’t putting off much heat right now.

I get to cool off a little from the heavy exertion… though I can’t let myself get too comfortable. We still have some distance to go!

I notice the stones nestled into the embers of the fire and I roll my eyes …

Of course it would be too much to expect that I could get through one interaction with that woman without her wolfing down a cup of that stuff(!)

We’ve been sitting at the fire for a while before the mother comes out of the herb hut holding a set of wooden tongs and, speaking to me, says “The shamaness will see you now.” her baby still sucking away at her tit.

“Thank you.” I say, getting up as the woman bends over the fire and plucks out one of the stones with the tongs.

I pull back the door curtain and am greeted by the face of a woman who’s been ancient for as long as I can remember!

She wears tight fitting, patchwork leather clothing that fully covers her chest and arms.

Eagle down feathers adorn her shoulders and, on her head, she wears a headdress of long, eagle flight feathers, held in place by bone.

I’m just in time to see her break off a chunk of dried wormwood and begin grinding it to powder between her fingers in a wooden bowl in her hand.

I feel the heat radiating against my flesh as the woman with a baby in one arm passes me by with the other carrying the scorching hot rock.

She brings the tongs to the top of another wooden bowl, this one mostly full of drinking water.

She drops in the stone and the liquid hisses violently from the heat it’s suddenly been exposed to.

The mother disappears, taking the baby and leaving me with the old woman.

“Sit.” she instructs in a ragged, aged voice, gesturing to the floor.

I sit down.

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She lowers herself down to the floor as well, though with some difficulty.

She reaches for the hot water.

“Must you, Grandmother?” I ask, flatly.

She stops briefly, turning her (one blind and milky, one sighted and green) eyes to me.

“It’s for my arthritis.” she lies.

I saw the amount she ground up, that was not a medicinal quantity!

She pinches the stone and, touching it as briefly as possible, removes it from the hot water, she then takes that bowl and tips its contents into the one with the dried wormwood powder.

The bitter smell of the herbal mix stings my nose as it infuses the hot water.

Only once she’s satisfied that her drug is preparing does she turn her face back to me and ask “So… who?”

“Morlu, originally of the Boar Hearthstead, and… Dolut… of the Bison Hearthstead…”

She falters in bringing the liquid to her lips to blow on it.

She carefully places the cup back down on the ground in front of her and only then asks “My grandson is dead?”

“He is, Grandmother.”

“…and your intended too?”

“Him too, Grandmother.” I answer, stoically.

“How?”

“A cavebear… It smelled out our stores in the larder. They died to ensure we didn’t starve when Winter comes.” I explain.

“Did you at least kill the cavebear?” she asks.

“No, Grandmother… We drove it off but couldn’t kill it.”

“I… see…” she says, allowing herself a moment before continuing “…make your requests, Raala.”

“We ask for thorns from the territory of Golden Eagle Hearthstead and hospitality for the night.” I state.

“You haven’t asked for access.” she observes.

“Because you can’t deny us access, Grandmother. That cave isn’t yours.” I scowl.

“True, true… but the thorns are… the hospitality is… Mine to withhold if I don’t feel my hearthstead is being treated with due respect…”

‘Respect’… nothing more than a word old people use when they know they would sound pathetic and petty if they explained what’s actually upset them!

How is it ‘respectful’ to threaten to withhold otherwise useless thorn bushes from your own grandson’s burial!? To threaten his pallbearers with another night of bad rest!?

“*sigh*… Please grant us thorns and hospitality and access to the Cave of Bones, Grandmother!” I sneer.

She lifts the drug concoction to her lips and pauses.

“Granted.” she says “I’ll see you when you’re finished, Raala.” before bringing the vessel to her mouth and tipping back a (far more than healthy) draught of the liquid.

I stand up and turn to leave but, before I make it out…

“One more thing…” the old woman stops me “…I know you probably weren’t planning to but don’t take the Eastern Passage… The last visitors who came that way informed me that it was showing signs of imminent collapse… You don’t want to get trapped outside the Basin…”

---later---

I put away my flint sickle and pick up what should be the last of the thorn bushes, careful not to prick my fingers.

I bring it to my brother’s stretcher and lay it over the top of his bark cloth shroud.

I lift up my end, Tabrok taking the back.

We approach the cavemouth, the enormous ice wall that marks the Southeastern boundary of the Great Basin up the mountain behind it, and stop just as Wuurlo and Morsgo are dipping their torches into the pine pitch they’ve melted on a flat stone, over the small fire they started in the pit (there for that purpose).

Now coated, they touch the torches to the fire to ignite them.

“Everyone remember, if there’s a smell, we don’t mention it, we don’t react to it!” I instruct.

It doesn’t do to insult the dead… that’s how you get cursed!

The two boys light our way with the torches as we enter the cave and begin navigating to the chamber.

Strange symbols, most of which I don’t understand, line our way, dancing in the light of the flames.

There is, indeed, a smell… as there usually is.

Nothing in this world smells as foul as bodies in the advanced stages of decay!

Thank Mother Mammoth that the smell seems like it’s a few moons old at least!

The last time I was here, I nearly got cursed because of how hard it was to keep from gagging!

We pass by the entrance to the Eastern Passage and round the corner into the great, high ceilinged chamber where the dead of Bison, Wolf, Golden Eagle, Boar, Moufflon and Elk Hearthsteads are all interred.

Pale white bones glitter through their bark cloth shrouds as the light falls on them.

We pick our way through the crowded ossuary to find the spot for Bison’s dead.

We set down the palls, remove the thorns and shrouds and push both the men off.

Morlu became a Bison when he moved from Boar so he goes here, not in Boar’s space.

I know I should be as upset about his death as Dolut’s but… I’m not…

Though it makes me incredibly guilty to admit to myself, I’m actually a tiny bit relieved…

He definitely wasn’t a bad or evil man… and I definitely didn’t want him to die but… I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as his woman either!

He was so very boring!

If I’d ranked my choices of the boys from all six clans, he wouldn’t have been my last pick, but he’d certainly have been closer to the bottom of the list rather than anywhere near the top!

For my brother, I’m simply grieving… feeling the agonising emptiness of the loss… For Morlu, though, my feelings are a lot more complicated.

Did I manifest this by wishing not to have to have him as my man?

Did I curse Morlu to death and was my brother’s death a ripple of that curse?

I don’t think I did that… is it possible to wield the power of curses unwittingly?

No!

…Right?

I can wrestle with my guilt later!

Right now I have a job to do!

No longer rigored, we are able to take the broken off heads of their spears and fasten them into their hands, bring both men’s knees to their chests, wrap their arms around their shins and bind them into that shape, making them look like they’re huddling their legs for warmth in a cold Winter.

We wrap them in there shrouds, tightly.

Entwining the thorny vines around the cocoons to ward away any scavengers who might enter this cave, we lash them down.

Our work done, there’s one final respect to pay.

As the sister of one and intended of the other, it’s obviously me who needs to do it.

“These were good men…” I eulogise “…they gave their lives to spare us slow deaths. May the Great Eagle carry their spirits to the Forest of Plenty and not drop them into the Maw of the Ravening Wolf. By Mother Mammoth.”

“By Mother Mammoth.” repeat the others in hushed tones.